by Dee Brown
Reacting to pressures from the civilian population which had been aroused by shocking accounts of the Fetterman disaster, the United States Senate on January 30 passed a resolution requesting the Secretaries of War and Interior “to furnish the Senate all official reports, papers, and other facts in possession of their respective departments which may tend to explain the origin, causes and extent of the late massacre of United States troops by Indians at or near Fort Phil Kearny, in Dakota Territory.”7
While Colonel Carrington still lay recuperating from his thigh wound at Fort Laramie, Washington bureaucracy became more deeply involved over what he had or had not done at Fort Phil Kearny. A few days after the Senate’s demand for an explanation of the causes of the Fetterman disaster, the President appointed a special commission “to visit the Indian country in the neighborhood of Fort Phil Kearny, for the purpose of ascertaining all the facts.”8 The commission, ordered to meet at Omaha on February 23, was composed of four army officers, Generals Alfred Sully, J. B. Sanborn, N. B. Buford and Colonel E. S. Parker; and two civilians, G. P. Beauvais and J. T. Kinney. Beauvais was a St. Louis trader who had lived among the Sioux for many years; Kinney had held the sutlership at Phil Kearny (and was no friend of Carrington).
By late March the commission was at Fort McPherson taking testimony from Colonel Carrington. For the first time he had an opportunity to present his side of the controversial incident, offering in evidence official messages and letters which he had sent and received, and patiently explaining all his actions from the time he received orders at Fort Kearney to the last day of his command at Fort Phil Kearny. “I close by stating,” he said, “that if further testimony should be deemed necessary there are at this post the following witnesses.” And he listed the names of his orderly, Archibald Sample, three other enlisted men who had been present at moments of crucial decision, and William Bailey, the civilian guide who had come with him to Fort McPherson.9 The commission, however, called none of these witnesses, and as soon as hearings were declared closed, departed for Laramie and Fort Phil Kearny to continue its investigations.
While Carrington waited anxiously through the spring for the commission’s verdict of responsibility—a verdict which might exonerate him or be “fatal to his reputation,”10 he received support from an unexpected source—Jim Bridger. Bridger had disagreed with Carrington on some actions at Phil Kearny, but when the scout learned of the colonel’s difficulties, he prepared a statement for the Army and Navy Journal:
Now as to the Philip Kearny massacre, it has been said that the Indians did not approach with hostile intent, but that the commanding officer, mistaking their intentions, fired on them, and thus brought on a fight. This is preposterous. Up to that time the Indians had been hanging around the fort every day, stealing stock on every opportunity, attacking the trains going to the woods, and even stealing up at night and shooting men connected with passing trains, while they were sitting around their camp fires, within one hundred yards of the fort. But a few days before the massacre a train going to the wood was attacked, and in defending it, Lieutenant Bingham, a promising young officer of the 2nd Cavalry, and one Sergeant, lost their lives. This may be a sign of friendship, but I don’t think so. Every person that knows anything of affairs in this country knows very well that the massacre at Fort Philip Kearny was planned weeks before, and that the Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahos had been collecting together, in preparation for it, on Tongue River, until they numbered 2,200 lodges. The intention was to attack Fort Philip Kearny first, and if they were successful to then attack Fort C. F. Smith. At the present time the entire tribe of the Northern Sioux are collecting on Powder River below the mouth of Little Powder River, and their vowed intention is to make a vigorous and determined attack on each of the three posts, and on all trains that may come along the road. Friendly Indians report that they are being supplied with ammunition by half-breed traders connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company. There is no use sending out commissioners to treat with them, as it will be only acting over again last Summer’s scenes. They would be willing to enter into any temporary treaty to enable themselves to get fully supplied with powder with which to carry on the war. The only way to settle the question is to send out a sufficient number of troops to completely whip the hostile Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahos and make them sue for peace. Unless this is done the road had better be abandoned and the country given up to the Indians.
I have been in this country among these Indians nearly forty-four years, and I am familiar with their past history, and my experience and knowledge of them is greater than can be gained by commissioners during the sittings of any council that may be held. I know that these Indians will not respect any treaty until they have been whipped into it.
May 4, 1867 JAMES BRIDGER11
At last on July 8, General Sanborn as spokesman for the investigating commission issued a report on the causes and circumstances which led “to the horrible massacre of Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Fetterman’s party, December 21, 1866.” Sanborn reported the facts as he saw them, and instead of censuring Carrington, gently absolved him from blame. “The difficulty ‘in a nutshell,’” said Sanborn, “was that the commanding officer of the district was furnished no more troops or supplies for this state of war than had been provided and furnished him in a state of profound peace. In regions where all was peace, as at Laramie in November, twelve companies were stationed, while in regions where all was war, as at Phil Kearny, there were only five companies allowed.” 12
Unfortunately for Carrington, Sanborn’s favorable report was buried among derogatory statements from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, comments of biased Indian agents, letters from personal enemies such as Surgeon C. M. Hines and an unidentified sergeant, excerpts from unfriendly newspapers, and the damning comments of General Cooke. All these were published a few months later by the Senate’s Committee on Indian Affairs.
As for Carrington’s own testimony with its supporting documents, these papers were conveniently stored away by someone in authority in the Department of the Interior. For twenty years they would remain hidden in the files, and for twenty years Henry B. Carrington would fight a continuing battle to clear his tarnished reputation as a soldier.
2.
At Fort Phil Kearny, after Carrington departed in January 1867, bitter winter weather sealed the Montana Road to north and south, and for weeks at a time until spring Lieutenant-Colonel Wessells was without communication with the outside world. Old-timers afterward remembered that winter as being unusually severe in the Wyoming country—“cold, and a great deal of snow.”13 One of the men at the fort noted that “the thermometer most of the time was from 25 to 40 degrees below zero.”14
Wessells had come up from Reno determined to conduct a punitive winter campaign against the hostiles, but the terrible weather combined with shortages of supplies forced him to abandon his plans. From the day of his arrival the supply shortage grew rapidly more acute. Private William Murphy said the additional reinforcements from Laramie “made our condition, if anything, worse, for they had no provisions, and no feed for stock.”15 Reluctantly Wessells ordered Captain James Peale to take the two companies of the 2nd Cavalry back to Laramie in an attempt to save the horses from starvation. Peale and his men reached Laramie, but “without the animals, 150 in number; as evidence of that march, their carcasses could be seen many years afterward strewn along the road.”16
In February, ration allowances of hardtack, coffee, salt pork and flour were cut drastically. Supplies in the commissary were dwindling, and no one could foresee how many weeks would pass before supply trains could move again from the south. Corn supplies for the mules were still relatively abundant in February, and Finn Burnett told of burning ashes for lye, and then soaking corn in it to loosen the hulls. After removing the lye, he fried the softened corn in bacon grease. “Others learned the trick,” he said. “Many in garrison that winter lived on mules’ corn.”17
Another narrator who endured the
winter at Phil Kearny complained of the lack of fresh meat and vegetables. “One small loaf of bread was issued to us daily—just enough for one meal. After we had eaten that, we had to fall back on the musty hardtack and frowsy bacon or salt pork with black coffee. Sometimes we had bean soup.”18
By late winter all corn and forage for the livestock was exhausted, and Private Murphy said the mules began eating holes through the logs in their stables. “It was pitiful to witness the suffering of these poor patient animals,” wrote Frank Fessenden, who had remained at Phil Kearny with the regimental band. “At night, especially, we could hear them fairly moan and groan like a human being in their agony of hunger.”19 As soon as weather permitted, Quartermaster Dandy sent teams up Big Piney to cut green cottonwood limbs which the animals consumed avidly, and he risked one small expedition to Fort Reno for corn. “The snow was very deep,” said Private Murphy, “and it took several days to make the trip.”20
Other discomforts came from lack of warm clothing and firewood. “Our shoes were made of cheap split leather,” Murphy recorded, “and the shoddy clothes that were furnished at that time were not any protection. One thing in our favor was that after the first few days’ storm we had very little wind. Burlap sacks were at a premium and saved our lives. We wrapped them about our shoes to keep from freezing, for there were no overshoes or rubbers to be had at the fort.”21 Because of the continuous below-zero temperatures the huge pile of billets and slabs in the woodyard vanished long before winter’s end, and the wagons going up Big Piney for cottonwood branches for the mules began bringing back logs for fuel. “We often had to saw wood,” one enlisted man recalled, “for our heating stoves in the barracks until after tattoo at 9 P.M.”22
After weeks of poor diet, lack of proper exercise, and exposure to cold, the physical condition of officers and men began declining. “There was no place in the barracks to wash, and after the creeks were frozen over we could not take a bath until they thawed out the following spring.”23 Scurvy cases began showing up at the hospital, and according to Frank Fessenden few men escaped the disease. “For lack of vegetables,” Lieutenant Gordon noted, “the hospital was crowded to its limits by men down on their backs with scurvy and no special remedy other than drugs to prevent the entire garrison being afflicted. It was indeed a pitiable sight to see some of these poor soldiers so emaciated and weak and afflicted to that extent that their teeth were ready to drop out of their mouth.”24
Lieutenant-Colonel Wessells reported in his official record of events at the end of February: “Health of garrison not good, scurvy prevailing complaint.” On March 17 he recorded: “Train with antiscorbutants arrived from Laramie, weather extremely cold, snow storms frequent, forage exhausted, wood, fuel, exhausted. Outdoor drill impossible.”25 In April, cases of sickness were the highest for any month since establishment of the fort.
Morale collapsed of course, and with the coming of spring several men deserted. Some disappeared at night, over the stockade; others were more ingenious, Wessells recording in his May report that two men deserted with a party of Crow Indians, “painted and dressed in Indian costumes.”26
As bad as conditions were at Phil Kearny during that agonizing winter, the garrison was convinced that Fort C. F. Smith was worse off. From November 1866 until late March 1867, the fort on the Big Horn River was completely isolated, and a soldier writing from Laramie in midwinter reported pessimistically: “We have heard nothing from Fort C. F. Smith since the massacre, and we fear it has ‘gone up.’”27
However, when Wessells dispatched a small mail party to C. F. Smith in March “to see what had become of the men there,” his messengers returned with the news that C. F. Smith had survived the winter far better than Phil Kearny. The soldiers there had lived for weeks on a basic diet of corn, but their provident quartermaster had stocked a supply of potatoes and cabbages-secured from Bozeman in the autumn—and these vegetables were sufficient to keep down scurvy. More than anything else, the men had missed their mail and tobacco.28
Perhaps the single individual who suffered most acutely during the winter at Phil Kearny was not a victim of disease, malnutrition, exposure, or physical wounds. His was an ordeal of the spirit, a mental desolation. In January when Carrington was preparing to leave, Lieutenant-Colonel Wessells had requested that Captain Ten Eyck be temporarily detached from the 18th Infantry so that he might remain at the fort as commander of Company H, recently transferred to the newly formed 27th Infantry.
Exactly what happened to Ten Eyck after Carrington departed probably will never be known. Undoubtedly some of the new officers up from Laramie believed certain whispered allegations that Ten Eyck had acted in a cowardly manner when he was sent in relief of Fetterman. Some may have avoided his society from the time of their arrival; others may have shunned him because he had begun to drink heavily. Ten Eyck seemed to lose the confidence of the men under him; Wessells shifted him from H Company to F, then to A in February, and to C in March.
Late in the summer Ten Eyck transferred to Fort McPherson, rejoining the 18th Infantry, but the change brought no halt to his drinking. He reported for duty one day in a state of drunkenness so advanced that his commanding officer, Colonel William Dye, preferred charges against him. After Ten Eyck became sober, he promised to abstain thereafter from similar conduct, and the charges were withdrawn. A few days later he became drunk again, was charged with “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman” and ordered to a general court-martial, which found him guilty.
When General Grant reviewed the court-martial proceedings he directed that the finding be set aside. “Captain Ten Eyck,” Grant wrote, “will resume his sword and report for duty.”29
For Tenodor Ten Eyck this was but a temporary reprieve. He was plagued by chronic diarrhea, hemorrhoids, and rheumatism. And the whispers—real or imagined—followed him wherever he went. Five years after the Fetterman fight he quit the Army. Like Carrington he was a victim of rumors to which he had no opportunity of replying, but unlike Carrington he engaged in no campaign to clear his record, preferring a straitened civilian life to continuous abuse in the military.
3.
As Jim Bridger predicted in his May letter to the Army and Navy Journal, Fort Phil Kearny was destined for more Indian troubles. In June, Red Cloud’s hostiles began a steady harassment of the fort, with occasional darting raids against wood trains. In July they became so dangerous in the pinery that Wessells assigned full companies to guard the woodcutters.
For defense, fourteen wagon boxes were formed into an oval-shaped corral on an open plain near the pinery. Tents were pitched just outside the ring of boxes so that the soldiers and civilian wood choppers could remain overnight outside the protection of the fort.
Early on the morning of August 2, several hundred Indians appeared suddenly on the foothills north of this wagon-box corral. As the Indians approached, wood choppers and soldiers rushed to the corral to take up positions. In command was Captain James Powell, who had remained at Phil Kearny as an officer of the 27th Infantry Regiment, and as he watched the waves of hostiles riding swiftly up from the creek he must have recalled the recent fate of Fetterman’s command.
Unlike Fetterman, however, Powell had the advantage of cover, and he also had a second advantage—each man of his command was armed with a new breech-loading Springfield rifle. Inside the corral were several carefully arranged boxes filled with several thousand rounds of ammunition. “Instead of drawing ramrods and thus losing precious time,” said Sergeant Samuel Gibson, “we simply threw open the breech-blocks of our new rifles to eject the empty shell and slapped in fresh ones.”30
In their first assault the Indians were mounted, circling the soldiers’ position, then charging in, expecting to overrun the wagon boxes when the defenders paused to reload. To the vast surprise of the attackers, the soldiers’ fire was continuous. Many ponies went down, screaming in agony, and many braves died within a few yards of the wagon boxes.
Driven back, the hostil
es dismounted, sent their surviving horses to the rear, stripped themselves, and returned to resume the fighting. “It chilled my blood,” Sam Gibson said, on recalling his first sight of the naked Indians attacking on foot. “Hundreds and hundreds of Indians swarming up a ravine about ninety yards to the west of the corral … formed in the shape of a letter V … immediately we opened a terrific fire upon them. … Our fire was accurate, coolly delivered and given with most telling effect, but nevertheless it looked for a minute as though our last moment on earth had come. Just when it seemed as if all hope was gone, the Indians suddenly broke and fled.”31
According to Sergeant Gibson, Red Cloud was in the field that day directing the fighting from a ridge just out of rifle range. Years afterward Red Cloud said he lost the flower of his fighting warriors in the Wagon Box Fight.
That hostile forces of the Powder River country were operating in concert is indicated by the fact that on the day preceding the Wagon Box Fight, a similar attack was made against soldiers and civilians working in a hayfield near Fort C. F. Smith. As at Phil Kearny the men were prepared, having constructed a barricade of willow matting, and they were armed with the new repeating rifles. Three soldiers were killed, four wounded, in the Hayfield Fight; Indian losses were much heavier.
These two crushing defeats of the Indians came too late, however, to save the Montana Road. Fetterman’s disaster had shaken the nation; its military and political effects ran so deep that once the machinery of appeasement was set in motion, the midsummer victories could not reverse the course of events. Fort Phil Kearny’s days were numbered, and so were C. F. Smith’s and Reno’s.
In October, Captain Dandy, quartermaster at Fort Phil Kearny, met with a group of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders on Big Piney, five hundred yards from the fort. Here were held the first preliminary talks toward an agreement for eventual abandonment of the three forts and closing of the Montana Road. The Indians agreed to cease all hostilities if the soldiers would leave the country north of the Platte and west of the Black Hills.
